I used to live in Vegas. The only betting I did was on sports (If only Pete Rose had said this from the start…). If you ever played the table games in a casino though, you understand the idea of going “all in.” Yesterday, Lamont McClure did that in the PA-7 race. He has a good poll and a lot of advantages in this race, but his fundraising numbers finished third last quarter. So, he loaned himself $200,000 for the campaign. This isn’t money carried over from his County Executive races or anything like that. It’s personal money.

Let’s start with the obvious here- I don’t think $200k assures victory, or anything like that. The reality is that while many of the candidates in this race are struggling to raise cash, someone will spend a lot more than $200k, possibly in this quarter alone. Rumors are that Ryan Crosswell will raise another $350k, almost entirely from outside of Pennsylvania, let alone the district. The truth is that with every additional candidate the DCCC recruits into this race, it’s more and more likely that Crosswell’s out of town Republican donors buy this primary. They don’t care, they’re fine running a Republican as a Democrat, I guess. In fact, they’re claiming their new guy will raise $175-200k, and that will bring in some outside fantasy money. The truth is they’ve not delivered a single promise to this date associated with this candidate, so why should we believe it?

Here’s what $200k does do though. $200k will pay for roughly six pieces of district-wide mail. When you’re the candidate in the lead, and you have the most name recognition, that eases any fall from grace caused by other candidates out spending you. If you’re polling 40% in Northampton County now, it means you probably hold most of that- and that’s about 18% of the total vote. What this means, in moron proof terms, is that there is no physical path to victory for a second Northampton County, labor backed candidate who currently basically polls at zero. You can scream and yell about all the fictional general election polls, all the fictional endorsements from statewide figures, and how your personal negatives actually won’t hurt you- none of that matters. If the existing front-runner spends $200k on paid communications, that’s probably not going to win the race- but I guarantee you, the other person trying to run on the same lane on the track will lose. This isn’t opinion. It’s math. I’m not sure what personal gain some people have with pushing this charade, but they’re not giving honest, decent, good advice.